Released on September 15, 2009, it is the third Brown novel to involve the character of Harvard UniversitysymbologistRobert Langdon, following 2000's Angels & Demons and 2003's The Da Vinci Code.[2] It had a first printing of 6.5 million (5 million in North America, 1.5 million in the UK), the largest in Doubleday history. On its first day the book sold one million in hardcover and e-book versions in the U.S., the UK and Canada, making it the fastest selling adult novel in history.[5] It was number one on the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction[6] for the first six weeks of its release,[7] and remained on the list for 29 weeks. As of January 2013, there were 30 million copies in print worldwide.[8]

Contents

Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is invited to give a lecture at the United States Capitol, with the invitation apparently from his mentor, a 33rd degreeMason named Peter Solomon, who is the head of the Smithsonian Institution. Solomon has also asked him to bring a small, sealed package which he had entrusted to Langdon years earlier. When Langdon arrives at the Capitol, however, he learns that the invitation he received was not from Solomon, but from Solomon's kidnapper, Mal'akh, who has left Solomon's severed right hand in the middle of the Capitol Rotunda in a recreation of the Hand of Mysteries. Mal'akh then contacts Langdon, charging him with finding both the Mason's Pyramid, which Masons believe is hidden somewhere underground in Washington D.C., and the Lost Word, lest Solomon be executed.

Langdon is then met by Trent Anderson, head of the Capitol police, and Inoue Sato, the head of the CIA's Office of Security. Sato claims that Mal'akh poses a threat to the national security of the US, and that his capture is more important than Peter's rescue, although she refuses to elaborate. Examining Solomon's hand, they discover a clue leading them to Solomon's Masonic altar in a room in the Capitol's sub-basement, where they find a small pyramid lacking a capstone, with an inscription carved into it.

Sato then confronts Langdon with the security x-ray taken of his bag when he entered the Capitol, which reveals a smaller pyramid in the package Langdon brought in response to the request by the kidnapper posing as Solomon. Langdon explains that he was unaware of its contents, but Sato, dissatisfied with this, attempts to take Langdon into custody. Before she can arrest him, however, she and Anderson are assaulted by Warren Bellamy, the Architect of the Capitol and a Freemason, who then flees with Langdon during the melee. He later explains to Langdon that he too has been in contact with Mal'akh, and wants Langdon's assistance in rescuing Peter.

Mal'akh is revealed to be a Freemason with tattoos covering almost his entire body. He infiltrated the organization in order to obtain an ancient source of power,[9] which he believes Langdon can unlock for him in return for Peter Solomon's life. Several chapters also delve into Mal'akh's history with Peter Solomon: many years ago, Peter bequeathed a large sum of inheritance money to his rebellious son, Zachary, who then fled the Solomon household and led a reckless life in Europe until he was arrested and imprisoned in Turkey for smuggling drugs. Peter flew to Turkey, but decided to have Zachary extradited in a week's time instead of getting him out immediately in order to teach him a lesson. But apparently, Zachary was murdered by his cellmate, who got his hands on Zachary's fortune and fled to Greece to lead a luxurious life under the name Andros Dareios. Dareios, however, soon grew tired of his life. Apparently having spoken with Zachary about Solomon's life as a Mason, Dareios broke into Solomon's home to find the pyramid, but accidentally killed Peter's mother, Isabel, and was in turn shot and left to fall into a frozen river by a vengeful Solomon himself. Surviving the fall, Dareios nursed himself back to health, covered his scars and eventually his entire body with tattoos and set off on a mission to infiltrate the Freemasons and gain access to their secrets, adopting the name Mal'akh.

As Langdon deals with the events into which he has been thrust, Mal'akh destroys the Smithonsonian-sponsored laboratory of Dr. Katherine Solomon, Peter's younger sister, where she has conducted experiments in Noetic Science, in the process ambushing and almost killing Katherine in a cat-and-mouse chase, but Katherine manages to escape and meet up with Langdon and Bellamy. Mal'akh then destroys all of Katherine's research. Eventually, when cornered by the authorities, Bellamy is forced to give himself up while Langdon and Katherine escape. Both are later apprehended by Sato's team. Following clues regarding Mal'akh's previous identity as Peter Solomon's psychiatrist, Dr. Christopher Abaddon, Sato allows Langdon and Katherine rush to his mansion to confront him, but Mal'akh ambushes them and murders their CIA escort. Meanwhile, as he is being interrogated by Sato, Bellamy expresses belief that Sato is working with Mal'akh, but Sato assures Bellamy that she is also pursuing Mal'akh in the interests of national security, and displays a piece of evidence that visibly shocks Bellamy.

Mal'akh places Langdon into an airtight sensory deprivation tank, where he interrogates Langdon by slowly filling the tank with liquid. He is able to convince Langdon to unlock the code at the Pyramid's base, but continues to fill the tank until Langdon apparently drowns. Mal'akh then ties Katherine to a chair and inserts an open-ended transfusion needle into her arm, and leaves her to bleed to death, and then flees with a weakened and wheelchair-bound Peter Solomon to the Temple Room of the Scottish Rite's House of the Temple. He uses the threat of not calling an ambulance for Katherine as further coercion for Peter's cooperation. Sato leads a team of agents to the mansion after Langdon and Katherine's escort fails to check in, and are able to save Katherine's life. Langdon is revealed to have survived, due the "water" in the tank actually being breathable oxygenated liquid, and the tank being a device for meditation. Sato, Langdon, and Katherine race to the House of the Temple where Mal'akh threatens to release a heavily edited video showing government officials performing secret Masonic rituals (the same video that Sato showed to Bellamy), which without context, appears highly disturbing. Mal'akh forces the Word—the circumpunct—out of Peter and tattoos it on his head on the last portion of unmarked skin on his body. Mal'akh then orders Peter to sacrifice him, as he believes that it is his destiny to become a demonic spirit and lead the forces of evil. When Peter claims that he will do so without hesitation to avenge his son and mother, Mal'akh shocks Peter by revealing that he is actually Zachary Solomon himself, having conspired with the prison warden to fake his death by disfiguring the body of another inmate beyond recognition (at the same time, Langdon, Katherine and Bellamy discover several photos of Zachary in Greece after his supposed death that show his gradual transformation into Mal'akh). Tears in his eyes, Peter prepares to stab Zachary, but ultimately cannot bring himself to do so, and drops the knife just as Langdon arrives and tackles him. Director Sato arrives at the Temple in a helicopter, which smashes the Temple's overhead glass panel, the shards of which fatally impale Zachary. The CIA then thwart Zachary's plan to transmit the video to several leading media channels using an EMP blast, disabling a cell tower in the network path leading from Zachary's laptop computer. Langdon and Katherine then share a tearful reunion with Peter, and mourn Zachary's death. Zachary, in soul form, is only briefly able to lament his body's mutilation before he is presumably dragged down to Hell.

Later on, Peter informs Langdon that the circumpunct Zachary tattooed on his head is not the Word. He also informs Katherine that he made back-ups of all of her noetic research data on his own computer, meaning her research can continue. Deciding to take Langdon to the true secret behind the Word, Peter leads him to the room atop the Washington Monument and tells him that the Word—a common Christian Bible, the Word of God—lies in the Monument's cornerstone, buried in the ground beneath the Monument's staircase. Langdon realizes that the symbols on the pyramid's base spelled out the words Laus Deo which translate to Praise God. These words are inscribed upon the small aluminum capstone atop the Monument, which is the true Masonic Pyramid.

Peter tells Langdon that the Masons believe that the Bible is an esoteric allegory written by humanity, and that, like most religious texts around the globe, it contains veiled instructions for harnessing humanity's natural God-like qualities—similar to Katherine's Noetic research—and is not meant to be interpreted as the commands of an all-powerful deity. This interpretation has been lost amid centuries of scientific skepticism and fundamentalist zealotry. The Masons have (metaphorically) buried it, believing that, when the time is right, its rediscovery will usher in a new era of human enlightenment.

Robert Langdon: A professor of symbology at Harvard University and the protagonist of the novel.

Mal'akh: A Mason whose body is covered with tattoos and the novel's main antagonist. Mal'akh sees himself as a physical manifestation of the angel Moloch, as he worshipped the Black Arts in order to grow stronger and he performed numerous aspects of black magic which allowed the angel to enter his body. Mal'akh is the Hebrew word for 'angel'. Throughout the book, he also uses the name Dr. Christopher Abaddon to gain his father's trust, and Andros Dareios, a name he used while hiding out in Greece before the book's events. Of note, he is the first antagonist in the Robert Langdon series who serves as both the killer and the mastermind of events.

Peter Solomon: A Smithsonian secretary, billionaire philanthropist, Freemason, father of Zachary Solomon, and close friend of Robert Langdon. His kidnapping sets into motion Langdon's race to find the Mason's Pyramid and the Lost Symbol.

Trish Dunne: Katherine's metasystems analyst. She is murdered by Mal'akh while in his Dr. Abaddon disguise, when he drowns her in the ethanol-filled tank preserving a Giant Squid.

Isabel Solomon: mother of Peter and Katherine Solomon, grandmother of Zachary Solomon. She was killed ten years before the events of the book by Zachary, disguised as Andros Dareios.

Warren Bellamy: Architect of the Capitol and fellow Freemason to Peter Solomon. He aids Langdon and Katherine Solomon by helping them escape from Inoue Sato, briefly suspecting her of helping Mal'akh, but he later learns that he and Sato are on the same side.

Inoue Sato: Director of CIA's Office of Security, from whom Langdon must flee after she accuses him of criminal acts.

The Lost Symbol had been in development for several years; originally expected in 2006, the projected publication date was pushed back multiple times.[1] When officially announced, the hardcopy book was on pre-order lists for months leading up to its release, being heavily ordered both in the United States and Canada.[14][15] The book was published on September 15, 2009 with an initial print run of 6.5 million copies, the largest first printing in publisher Random House's history.[16][17] Electronic versions such as eBook[18] and Audible book versions[19] were also made available on the same date.[20] The American release audio book was read by Paul Michael, who also performed the audio book for The Da Vinci Code.

The book immediately broke sales records, becoming the fastest selling adult-market novel in history, with over one million copies sold on the first day of release. By the end of the first week, a total of two million copies had been sold in the U.S., Canada, and UK.[21] According to the publisher, the rapid sales prompted the printing of an additional 600,000 hardcover copies to the 5 million initially printed for the US market.[5] On its first day the book became the #1 bestseller on Amazon.com,[22] and the Amazon Kindle e-reader edition became the top-selling item on Amazon.com, outselling Amazon's sales of the hardback copy of the novel, which is the sixth best selling book of 2009 on pre-publication orders alone.[23]The Lost Symbol also ranked as the #1 bestseller in Amazon's Canadian and British sites.[24][25] Both Barnes & Noble and Waterstone's reported the book has broken all previous records for adult fiction in the United Kingdom.[26][27] According to Nielsen BookScan data, 550,946 copies of The Lost Symbol were sold in its first week of sale, taking $7.49 million. By the end of the second sales week, Transworld intended to have 1.25 million copies printed.[28]

The New York Times praised the book as being "impossible to put down" and claimed Brown is "bringing sexy back to a genre that had been left for dead." Nevertheless, it noted the overuse of certain phrases and italics, as well as the lack of logic behind characters' motivations. It also likened Inoue Sato to Jar Jar Binks.[29]Los Angeles Times said, "Brown's narrative moves rapidly, except for those clunky moments when people sound like encyclopedias."[30]Newsweek called the book "contrived", saying that to get through The Lost Symbol, just like The Da Vinci Code, it was necessary to swallow a lot of coincidences, but the book was still a page-turner, and that Brown "is a maze maker who builds a puzzle and then walks you through it. His genius lies in uncovering odd facts and suppressed history, stirring them together into a complicated stew and then saying, what if?"[31] The National Post's review called it a "heavy-handed, clumsy thriller" and that the character of the villain (Mal'akh) "bears an uncomfortably close similarity" to the Francis Dolarhyde character in Thomas Harris' 1981 novel Red Dragon.[32] The Daily Telegraph said the novel was "not quite the literary train-wreck expected."[33]TIME said the plot was fun, if bruising, but "It would be irresponsible not to point out that the general feel, if not all the specifics, of Brown's cultural history is entirely correct. He loves showing us places where our carefully tended cultural boundaries — between Christian and pagan, sacred and secular, ancient and modern — are actually extraordinarily messy."[34] Novelist William Sutcliffe's review in the Financial Times panned the book as "a novel that asks nothing of the reader, and gives the reader nothing back", adding that it "is filled with cliché, bombast, undigested research and pseudo-intellectual codswallop".[35] The digested read by John Crace in The Guardian ends with Robert Langdon begging Dan Brown "Please don't wheel me out again."[36] Slovene philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek described the book as "a candidate for the worst novel ever".[37]

According to a January 2013 article in the Los Angeles Times the final draft of the screenplay was due sometime in February, with pre-production expected to start in the mid-2013.[8] In July 2013 Sony Pictures announced they would instead adapt Inferno for an October 14, 2016[45] release date with Ron Howard as director, David Koepp adapting the screenplay and Tom Hanks reprising his role as Robert Langdon.[46]

^Burstein, Dan (2009). "Exploring the complex cosmos of The Lost Symbol". In Daniel Burstein & Arne de Keijzer (editors). Secrets of the Lost Symbol: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind The Da Vinci Code Sequel. Harper Collins. pp. 3–48. ISBN978-0-06-196495-4.

^Dunin, Elonka (2009). "Kryptos: The Unsolved Enigma". In Daniel Burstein & Arne de Keijzer (editors). Secrets of the Lost Symbol: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind The Da Vinci Code Sequel. Harper Collins. p. 319. ISBN978-0-06-196495-4. Dan Brown himself has admired Dunin's work and paid her the stellar compliment of writing her into The Lost Symbol as Nola Kaye . . .